Technology Thursday : Free D&D Character Sheet Resources

Good morning, everybody!! I do hope you’ve been enjoying this first week of Geek Month here on CheekyGeeks, because we’ve been partying every night over here! 😀

If you haven’t figured it out yet, today’s post is Dungeons & Dragons themed!! Huzzah! Today we’re going to go over some fun, alternate versions to the character sheets you can get from the Wizards of the Coast website. Now, don’t get me wrong, their basic sheet is all well & dandy, but there’s just so much more that one can do… so many options to explore!! One day, I hope to have some amazing ones here available for free, myself. (Can’t wait for that!) For now, though, let’s take a look at some of the ones I’ve found online, along with reviews:

While this site is primarily dedicated to the various Blackmoor campaigns, they’ve also go some excellent resources for you to peruse at your lesiure, along with some excellent maps & character sheets available for download. These are fairly straight-forward, with nothing particularly flashy about them, but there are a few differences between these & the regular ones you get from Wizards:

Both their Mystara (by Gazza555) & BlackMoor (by ZZG Staff) character sheets list all skills in the skill list section, with additional spaces for you to write in some, & spaces such as “Craft (_____)” & “Perform (_____)” & more

Every skill is keycoded to show if it:

is a skill that can be used untrained

has an armour check penalty, if any (remember to double the penalty for swim)

is a cross class skill (you’ll need to mark the little tick box if so)

Character sheet examples.

I was unable to pull up the back of the sheet created by Gazza555, which is sad news, considering how much I loved the front, but you could always sub the back of the sheet by ZZG Staff or even maddog. Technically, these sheets were created for specific campaigns, but we’ve found they work for us just fine. Also, the character sheet for Mystara by maddog opens in a Word document, meaning you could theoretically just type in what you wanted, should you choose to. I was also quite fond of the money section on the back of the BlackMoor sheet — it’s nice & big, just like I like it! It also has boxes for gems & jewelry — for this Rogue, that’s perfection!

All around, the sheets provided are pretty straight forward, easy to navigate, & good for pretty much any campaign.

This is, perhaps, my favourite character sheet creator I have *ever* come across! They have a version for Pathfinder & for D&D v.3.5. Seriously, these are amazing. If you choose to download every possible character type, there’s over 100 pages — it’s utter madness…! However, they have a really nifty feature for if you’d just like to make your own character. I went ahead & selected the single character “composer“, set my class as Rogue/Bard, selected a few other options (like colour for the sheet, if I wanted a large, medium, or small spell list, &c.) & viola! Instant character sheet! It’s extremely in depth, so it’s far more than 2 pages, though you *can* select a “simplified” version, if you so choose. You can even select to include DM pages, & if you’re the DM, you can select the classes to print out your entire parties character sheets! Like I said — madness!! It’s awesome, though.

The DM pages include different types of grids (hexegonal, square, diamond), timeline pages, NPC sheets, NPC group character sheets, party stat sheets, & more!
I really loved how the Equipment section was set up, too — there’s a little sillohette of a person & extending from the different limbs are lines that lead to sections for “Shoulders” or “Torso” & c. where you write in your equipment name & underneath that there’s a properties section where you can write in any special properties.

Examples of sheets from the Minotaur Composer

There’s really a lot of depth to these sheets, & for those who love the details, this is the way to go. However, if you’re looking for a light, basic sort of sheet, this is probably not what you seek, though theoretically, you could pull a couple of sheets for use from the mass! Personally, I adore this creator, & plan to use it from now on for my own campaigns when I run as DM.

There’s a multitude of resources for “prettier” character sheets out there, & they aren’t to odifficult to find. The first link I provided happens to be the site for Tony DiTerlizzi, best known for his artwork on many a Magic the Gathering card, the art from the Spiderwick Chronicles, & much, much more! I happened across that particular page while searching, & if you scroll to the bottom you can find some (a)d&d pages with sketched characters. The pages are very, very simple, but very fun to look at. I’m personally fond of this one of the Thief Mouse, Sam Wisewhiskers. So cute!!
The second link provided is from a fantastic gaming forum hat I only recently discovered (& will be searching through for quite some time…there’s so much information!) That particular thread links up to a fantastic set of character sheets that have all the needed sections & then some, but they’re divided in such as way that your eyes will find it most pleasing! Generally speaking, I hate how I tend to get “lost” in the regular character sheets (I forget where things are all the time) so having a colourful sectioned sheet like this is very fun to play with.

What makes this even beter is that it’s a .pdf & editable to perform calculations. Read the thread for further info!

Lastly, if you’re looking for something with more style to it, I’d highly recommend checking out places like Deviantart.com, as there are plenty of resources to be had. If you do that, or search the internet, though, make sure to check the rights, & make sure they’re free for personal use. When in doubt, send a message to the content owner & ask ’em!

What other resources would you guys like to get reviews on? Do you have any other cool D&D resources you know of? Share them with us in the comments!!
Cheers!!
— Elise M. Gross